The (metaphorical) elephant in the (really big) room

There's a parable that originated in India several thousand years ago, but has remained popular throughout the ages, about a group of blind men encountering an elephant for the first time, and sharing their perceptions of it. This version from Wikipedia:

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said, "elephant is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

Sometimes closeup photography is like that. This post is a series of photographs of a single object, and I'm not going to tell you what it is ahead of time. I got to spend an hour and a half playing with this thing last November, mostly by myself with my 600mm lens and my flash. I got a lot of abstract and semi-abstract closeups. I'm curious to see if you can figure out what the elephant is from seeing only little pieces of it.

How are you feeling about this? You've seen some pieces of the elephant, is it a wall, a fan, a spear? Maybe it's some of each, really. Probably one or two of you know what "S-IC-14" is without thinking too hard about it. Do you need more clues? Well, how about a couple of photos I took from the other end of the spectrum, my 17mm ultra-wide-angle lens?

That one may not be too helpful unless you saw it when I posted it on @doctorworm a while ago. Hm, how about this?

Well, if that didn't make it obvious, the banner kind of spoils it. These are all part of a Saturn V rocket they keep in a giant shed at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where you can just stop by and hang out with it. The regular JSC tour bans things like tripods and flashes, but the little section with this big rocket, and some smaller ones outside, is unrestricted and free. I didn't take a picture of the whole elephant, but you can see some at the Space Center website.

The rocket on display is whole but isn't quite unified, as it's made up of parts intended for the canceled Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions. The command module and the first stage (which is S-IC-14) came from Apollo 19, the second stage from Apollo 20, and the third stage from Apollo 18. (The rest of that rocket was used to insert Skylab into orbit.)

This is a pretty cool place for a photographer to just go and hang out and play for a little bit. It doesn't seem to be very well-known, and you have to go through JSC security to get there, which means you have to know you can, and probably bothers some people. (You just say "I want to go to Rocket Park" and they direct you, it's not like you need to show ID or get badged or anything.)

One tour passed through while I was there, but mostly it was just me and the rocket for ninety minutes, which was pretty cool. It's taken apart into sections so you can walk between the stages and get fairly close to their ends. The sides of the rocket are kept farther away, but the 600mm makes short work of that problem. You can't get at the command module, but the second-to-last photo was basically taken from inside the main engine exhaust.

Worth a visit if you're on the south end of Houston.